A nose by any other name…

A long-running joke in my family is that my nose is simply for decoration. It doesn’t work. I can’t remember a time it ever did. It’s not allergies or seasonal. It just is a stubborn, stuffy, finicky appendage on my face.

It’s not runny; it just tends to slam shut – constantly. I snore, and I mouth breath. My sister has the same affliction. We are addicted to nasal spray. Once when she pulled up next to me in her suburban for a kid exchange, without speaking, I opened my bag and tossed her my Afrin. It was an unspoken understanding she was without her’s.

It is a miserable existence.

I accidentally caught about 3 minutes of The Glenn Beck Show the other day. I say accidentally because I don’t watch the news. Judge me all day long, I can’t take it. I am trying to raise human beings; I am fully aware that the world is going to pot. I don’t need to waste time listening to lovely people comment on the disaster that is this planet. Glen was ranting with another guy about the end of our country and apocalypse and the upcoming American Holocaust and concentration camps.

My brain started and refused to stop processing. Concentration camps, that sounds wrong. I can’t get on the Glenn Beck bandwagon, one because I was ex-communicated from the Mormon church when I was three, and I think he’s Mormon. Two, he makes me tired. And three, the stock-piling of items for the end of the world evades me. I am barely getting groceries to make it until Thursday. I can’t get groceries for these people to last for years at a time. And, really if you want me to know the two items I feel most important in the event of Civil unrest? Phenergan and nasal spray.

I would never deny Christ. You can kill me, go ahead. But please don’t make me live without nasal spray. The thought of it makes me feel as though I am suffocating. I need Afrin.

So Justin came home the other day and immediately said,”Oh my gosh what is that smell????” I didn’t smell anything. Further investigation revealed Charlie had very bad pants. He jokes my nose doesn’t work, but I contest, it works. It just grows weary of smelling by the end of the day. In spite of the stuffiness, I can smell, and I smell well.

And not only can I smell, in general, I smell bravely. At some point in the journey of motherhood, smelling becomes a super power. Like the blind can hear better, moms can smell better. Even with my handicapped nose, I can smell and identify odors, aromas, fragrance, and trauma from great lengths. Dr. Suess could have written many books about I things that I can smell, how well I smell, and when and where and why I smell the smells I smell. I have decided that no one is allowed to question my smeller, for it smells well.

I can smell a sippy cup rotting under a chair. I can smell our wet mut. I can tell if you washed your hair. I can smell poop. I can smell pee. I can smell that ice cream scoop, give it to me. I can smell mildew, mold, and a running bath. I can smell when a baby wakes from a nap. I can tell if you have deodorant on from 50 feet, and speaking of feet, yours smell like rotting meat. I can smell over, I can smell under, I can smell thunder, I can smell foil. You ask me to smell, you wonder if it is spoiled, I bravely inhale and foresee your hereafter. That dish is festering, boiling won’t help. Eat that and everyone will smell your smells: the runs, the stools, vomit, and burps, throw it away – my dear, it’s not worth the hurt. I boldly will smell things plumbers would not. I fearlessly smell so you will not. I sniff, I snuffle, and I whiff. No stink is outside my cognizance child. There is no odor too mild. I dare you just try me; I dare you to trifle. No acridity or malodor is too rank. There isn’t a stank I’d fall to as prank. My smeller is so powerful I could rein with my succession. I could rein from a tower with my nose power. I could smell a flea on a lion, hunting a zebra on a tropical island. The zebra ate coconuts and burped for an hour. The nexus my nose could elaborate goes back as far as the zebra’s mother. So try me, I dare you, question my power. I could sit and just smell things for hours and hours… nothing’s too bitter, congealed or sour. Green eggs and ham or a zumblza I fear not the smells I will face today.

But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as He chose. 1 Cor 12:18

May your floors be sticky and your calling ordained. Love, Jami